


Broken Glass in the Morning Light

by xcourtney_chaoticx



Category: Emergency!
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mild Gore, Mild Language, Nightmares, Not Really Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 09:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3972451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xcourtney_chaoticx/pseuds/xcourtney_chaoticx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmares can come from all different sources. Sometimes they come from things you've seen. Sometimes they are about things that could've gone much, much worse. Sometimes they are the horrors you hope will never come to pass... and none are any less frightening than the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Failure

**Author's Note:**

> These six ficlets are meant to sound a little disjointed and off, meant to feel a little unsettling, to have a feel of repetitiveness in places. There are depictions of death, some gore, mild language.

Mike doesn’t dream often, or if he does he doesn’t remember them. Normally, he’s far too exhausted to dream after a long shift, and his brain seems to understand that it can’t dream at the station because any sleep gotten there is precious and mustn’t be disrupted. He remembers some of his dreams, remembers the more notable ones in great detail even though they were few in number.

There was a recurring dream he had as a child about being a fireman, one in which the details were eerily similar to the work he does now. There was another about being a cowboy, not in the old west but somewhere in the mountains, sometimes on the plains. There was his first wet dream, which involved Elizabeth Taylor and left him bathed in sweat with damp, sticky shorts, a hand shoved into his pants. Those were the ones he enjoyed remembering. Dreams like those don’t come often anymore.

Mike is more often than not presented with nightmares since becoming a fireman. He loves his job, don’t get him wrong. He loves being a fireman and helping people and working for his city, but he’s seen things nightmares are born from, things that would give nightmares nightmares, things that leave him shaking with bile crawling up his throat, things that almost have him screaming in his waking hours. It’s only fitting such things should haunt his nights, too.

There was a big apartment building fire he worked when he was a probie that still leads to nightmares of charred bodies, of bodies rigidly dead, of limp bodies with fear still etched on their faces. He threw up outside the apartment building and then at the station and later at his parents’ house. Twenty-one years old and he’d spent that night shaking and crying in his mother’s arms. Incidents with kids really did it. They were always the worst. He’s pulled small, broken, bloody bodies from smashed cars. He’s taken small, blue bodies out of the water. He’s retrieved small, charred bodies from fire. He’s found small, ashen bodies that have choked on smoke and carbon monoxide, unburned but killed by fire nonetheless. He thought being an engineer would help, would keep him away from those awful sights. He hoped he would no longer have nightmares of small ghouls coming after him, flesh sloughing off their bones or dripping lakewater, asking him why, why they were dead, why he couldn’t save them, why he failed.

Mike was half-right. There were no more nightmares of dead children, at least not as often as before. No, there are different nightmares to haunt him now: nightmares of failure and helplessness and uselessness. In the place of dead children are his comrades, his fellow firemen, men he’s willing to give his life for but can’t when he’s back monitoring the pumps. He loves being an engineer, he really does, but he misses the closer camaraderie of being on the front line.

Chet almost dies on a run, when half a building collapses on top of him. Mike’s sure he’s dead but can’t help feeling he’s still alive at the same time. Schrodinger’s fireman. Alive until he is determined to be dead. Mike all but begs Cap to let him go in, to join the search and recovery, but part of the building’s still on fire, so Cap makes him stay at the pumps. Mike wants to disobey more than anything, wants to shut off his pumps and charge headlong into the blaze and rubble to seek his friend, but he doesn’t. He does as he’s told.

The others treat him strangely back at the station, and Chet actually confronts him, asking pointedly why Mike is the only one not covered in dust and dirt and sweat. Mike tries to explain, tries to tell him he had to stay at the pumps without making it Cap’s fault, but Chet’s having none of it. Cap has to step in to end it. Chet storms off but the others apologize, especially Marco. When Mike gets home, though, he’s haunted by angry blue eyes in a dirty face.

He’s haunted by their brightness, by the electric spark of anger he sees in them. He’s haunted by skin that is much too pale, that is crusted with dirt and blood. He’s haunted by eyes that aren’t bright blue anymore but a dead and cloudy grey and broken limbs and protruding bones and the steady drip of blood on tile. The smell of blood is heavy and cloying and sits thick in his throat. There’s a rancid stench of rotting flesh that makes him gag but not throw up even though he desperately wants to. Broken, crooked fingers point accusingly from the end of a broken, crooked arm. Everything is broken and crooked and horrible, from Chet’s neck to his legs. His jaw hangs slack with a terrible grin, blood coating the teeth that remain. One arm hangs limp, obviously dislocated at the shoulder, but the other, broken and crooked though it is, reaches for Mike, who pleads for forgiveness, cries that he was only doing his job. Broken, crooked fingers close around his throat with surprising strength.

Mike wakes bathed in a cold sweat and lurches out of bed to the bathroom to empty his stomach. The stench of blood and rotting flesh still sits in his nose and throat. He heaves and vomits and sobs but the image of Chet’s broken body is burned into his mind’s eye. He cannot sleep again, and he goes into work that morning with an aching stomach and deep exhaustion. The others all check up on him and help him with his duties, picking up some of his slack. Cap even suggests he go take a nap in the dorm, and Mike’s thankful to everyone for helping him and that it’s a slow day so he can maybe get some sleep.

He’s not quite asleep when Chet comes in, and he sits up. The lineman is looking at the floor, scuffing the toes of his boots against the tile. What Mike can see of his face is red. Chet stammers out an apology, telling Mike he’s sorry for blaming him for not helping rescue him the other day. He goes on to tell him how scared he was and that he was afraid he would die and even admitted to crying and praying while he was trapped. Mike can see the younger man shaking. He slowly gets to his feet and approaches Chet, placing his hands on the lineman’s shoulders and calling his name softly.

Chet’s blue eyes are wide and wet and bright. They are alive. His body is whole and unbroken and the man was miraculously unhurt when he was pulled from the rubble just the other day. He’s alive. Mike can see he’s alive, can see it in the way he looks sad and scared and far younger than his twenty-six years, looks maybe eighteen and definitely upset. Mike tells him he accepts his apology, that he understands, that sometimes emotions can get the better of people after something so scary. He tells Chet he was scared, too, that he wanted to go in after him but couldn’t, that he’s always scared now because when things like that happen he can’t help.

Mike pulls Chet into a brief hug, one cut short by the tones dropping. He follows Chet out into the bay, feeling strangely energized by the forgiveness.


	2. Battle

Chet’s had plenty of nightmares in his life. He had some bad ones when his dad died in that industrial accident. There were some when his mother died of lung cancer about fifteen years later. Most of them came from Vietnam. He’s sure he can handle anything he’ll see on the job after Vietnam. He saw a guy slowly die of infection. He saw a guy get his leg blown off, a guy killed by punji sticks, people burned by napalm, piles of dead, rotting bodies. Nothing in LA could possibly be that bad.

The nightmares never manifested themselves while he was in Vietnam. He didn’t need such visions at night, not when he got his fill of horrors during the daylight hours, but once he got back to the states, the nightmares flooded in like a tidal wave. He couldn’t close his eyes without being overcome by blood and screams and death. The worst of them left him sweating and shaking and sobbing, unable to sleep again until exhaustion dragged him down and the process repeated itself. Drugs and alcohol helped for a little bit but then made it worse, so he quit them as quick as he could.

The nightmares didn’t stop, though. They’ve tapered off, lessened in number and frequency, but every so often something will touch one off. At least he’s never had a flashback. He’s heard there are guys who would relive parts of the war, who would think they were back in the shit in ‘Nam and not realize they’re wrong, who would hurt people they love without realizing it because they thought they were the enemy. Chet doesn’t want that to be him, but he knows it very well could be. He was in construction during ‘Nam, wasn’t in the shit, but he was there for Tet and still saw men die during his deployment and still saw horrible things no one stateside could really understand.

Chet’s out camping with Johnny because for as much grief as he gives the kid, he really does like him, really does enjoy spending time with him. They both enjoy camping, too, Johnny because it reminds him of growing up in the sticks and Chet because except for his Army time he never lived anywhere but in a city. They’ve been camping before. It’s always a good time. Chet loves it, a chance to leave the city, to get away from the noise of a city that doesn’t sleep, away from sirens and engines and shouting. In the woods, they can revel in the quiet white noise of the wind through leaves and crackling of wood burning. Tonight, though…

The night is neither cold nor warm. Wind rustles up against the canvas tent. They put their fire out before they went into their tent to sleep, and the smell of the dead fire is still there in Chet’s nose as he drifts off to sleep. He wakes to the sound of gunfire. He’s there in the middle of the Tet Offensive, M16 heavy in his hands. The enemy fire looks like flashbulbs in the distance. There are mortars and rockets and flares bursting overhead. The smell of smoke and gunpowder sits heavy in his nose, slips down into his throat. His heart almost seems to pound in time with the automatic bursts from his weapon even though he knows that’s impossible. Somehow, he’s the only one fighting and he’s screaming for backup but there’s no one there to help him. He’s there in Pleiku all alone, screaming for help, facing down a massive enemy force, and he knows innately this is wrong, that this is not how it went down that day. His mind won’t fix it.

He’s alone and terrified, his heart beating out of his chest, surrounded by VC. He screams again. Someone grabs him from behind and that’s it, he’s been flanked and ambushed and now they’ll torture him and kill him. He struggles wildly, still screaming for help that won’t come. They will not take him. There’s a voice in his ear. It’s warm and familiar and it must be a trick because that voice doesn’t belong here. He won’t meet this voice for a few years now, but there it is, warm and soothing.

Chet comes back to reality slowly, the fog lifting from his mind. Johnny’s voice stays close, most of the words familiar, some of them foreign, all of them comforting. His chest heaves under Johnny’s arms, his breath wheezing. Tears burn in his eyes. His throat is raw from screaming when he thought he’d only been doing so in his dream. Johnny’s thin chest is pressed against Chet’s back, the paramedic’s breathing steady and even. He tries to get Chet to breathe with him, to calm down, to breathe slowly. He asks what happened. He asked why Chet had such an awful dream. Chet tells him everything, his voice thick, his limbs shaking.

Johnny’s voice is tight as he tells Chet it’s okay, that he’s safe, that he’s in the hills of California not the jungles of Vietnam. Chet does as he’s bidden, at least he tries to, tries to breath slow and calm, tries to ward off the horrible thoughts of Vietnam. The wind rustles against the canvas tent. A shiver runs up Chet’s spine, and Johnny’s voice whispers in his ear again.


	3. Crash

Johnny likes to think of himself as happy. He’s more often than not found with a smile on his face or with some harebrained scheme in his head he has too much faith in. Sometimes he’ll worry himself crazy over something silly, but not too often, and maybe he’s a little too easily worked up over little things, but overall he’s a happy guy. Given his personal history, that may not be entirely expected.

The worst thing was watching his parents die in a car accident in Oklahoma City when he was seven. Little Johnny was unhurt but for some cuts and bruises, but his parents were killed, and just like that he was shipped off to live at his aunt and uncle’s ranch. He grew up roping cattle and riding horses, racing his cousins bareback across the plains. He was always a wiry kid, skinny but strong and ready for anything. When he was thirteen, his family uprooted and moved the ranch to California. When he was fifteen, the barn caught fire and thankfully no people or animals were hurt. Sometimes he got bullied for being half-Indian or too skinny or too excitable, but overall he was pretty happy.

Being happy helps him through some of the things he sees as a fireman, later as a paramedic. He sees terrible things, sad things, things that make him angry, so he tries to be happy, tries to be a goofball, tries to look for the good in people, and it usually helps. Nightmares have never been a common occurrence for Johnny. He can recall one or two, always about the accident when he was seven. His mind is usually good to him, will provide him happy dreams to carry him through the night.

Then Drew Burke dies. Ofc. Drew Burke, twenty-five years old, with a lovely wife and a lovelier daughter, dies. An old man hit him with a car probably a long time after he should’ve stopped driving. Johnny wants to hate him, that old man, but he can’t. It’s not like the old man had meant to hit Drew, and he seemed pretty broken up about it. Johnny half-wishes he wasn’t on the squad called to the scene because he’s selfish and wants to be spared the pain. The other half of him feels almost blessed to have been there, to have been a familiar face for Drew in his last conscious moments, to have been the last face Drew ever saw. Drew deserved to see such a friendly face there at the end, and maybe Johnny is overdue for such sadness.

Johnny spends his days off planning Drew’s funeral with Pam, and then he attends the funeral as a pallbearer and gives Pam the flag that draped Drew’s casket. Drew was his best friend, and he really tries not to cry. He’s always heard it’s only the good who die young, that the best ones are taken too soon, has heard it since his parents died. Roy tells Johnny that Joanne and the kids are away for a few days at her parents’ and asks if Johnny would like some company for those few days. Johnny says that he would, and he’s grateful to Roy for bringing it up because he doesn’t want to beg at a time like this, because he really does want someone there, because he’s a little selfish.

Roy and Johnny camp out in Johnny’s living room. Roy lies out across the couch, feet hanging off the edge. Johnny curls up like a cat in his chair, curls up impossibly small for a grown man. A feeling of unease settles over him as Roy’s soft snores fill the room, as thunder rumbles low on the horizon, as the smell of rain drifts in through the open window. He doesn’t know why. It didn’t rain when Drew died or when the barn caught fire or when his parents were killed. It was sunny and warm on all those days. He doesn’t why he feels so uneasy tonight when it’s so different from all the other days.

His ears are assaulted by screeching brakes and crunching metal. The drivers’ side front door of his parents’ car is smashed in by a drunk driver, slamming it sideways into a lamppost, killing both his parents instantly. He cries for his mother and father, for his mama and papa, cries even though at seven he’s a big boy and big boys aren’t supposed to cry. He hurts. There are bumps and bruises everywhere but it doesn’t matter because his mama and papa aren’t moving even though he’s crying for them. The smell of blood mixes with gasoline, heavy and sweet and horrible. He hates it. It turns his stomach.

Firemen surround the car, and one of them pulls Johnny out of the backseat and holds him. The firemen work on cutting his parents out of the car. Johnny cries and cries and the fireman just holds him. His face is familiar and kind and warm, just like his voice, though his voice is a little sad, too. It’s a sad scene, a little boy crying his heart out while firemen cut his dead parents out of a car and a drunk sits on the pavement blinking up at a policeman, his eyes glazed over. It’s strange to simultaneously live it and see it from the outside. He hasn’t done this before, hasn’t seen it like this. The fireman holding him looks familiar but it’s impossible because this man won’t be a fireman for many years to come, would be a fireman in Los Angeles not Oklahoma City. He’s warm and familiar, with a kind face and hair somewhere between ginger and brown and eyes like a cloudy day when the sun tries to peek through.

Johnny comes back to the present like he’s surfacing from a lake. He gasps for breath suddenly and it’s shaky and thick and his face is wet. Roy is there beside him, holding him, just like the fireman in his dream. His hand is rough and warm on the back of Johnny’s neck and splayed across his back. It’s probably uncomfortable for him to be kneeling on the floor like that, but Johnny is a little selfish and he just wants to feel safe and loved there in Roy’s arms while he can. Roy’s voice is calming and warm and low. It rumbles like thunder on the horizon, is sweet like the scent of coming rain. It’s like seeing a rainstorm on the horizon after a long drought and he wants to run out into the whipping wind and cool rain.

But Roy is not a storm, not by a long shot. He’s the gentle spring rain: calming, soothing, warm. Johnny nestles himself further into those arms. Roy’s still kneeling on the floor.


	4. Ghost

Roy was in the Army, but he was never sent to Vietnam like so many other guys. He’s grateful, of course, he never wanted to go to ‘Nam. He was lucky. He married his grade school sweetheart and had two beautiful children and if he lost everything tomorrow he’d be okay as long as he still had them. When he came back stateside from the base in Germany, he found himself somehow missing the regimentation of military life, missed the uniformity and the way he knew what he was supposed to do on any given day, what his plans were for the day. He supposes that’s why the fire department appealed to him so much. The department has a dress code, a uniform, a code of conduct. Being able to save lives is a bonus.

Strangely, he’s probably in more danger now as a fireman than he ever was in the Army. He’d been in Germany, never in battle, but fighting fires makes him feel like he imagines battle would. His heart rate skyrockets, blood pounding hot through his veins, his muscles taut and loose all at once, readying him to fight as if he could knock out the flames with a punch. It’s scary and terrifying and damn him but Roy loves it. He loves the adrenaline and the fear and the rush of being alive when he could so easily be dead.

Joanne is a saint, pure saint, for letting him choose this work and letting him do it, for seeing how excited it makes him and telling him to do it because he loves her with his whole being and if she would’ve said no, he would’ve agreed. She lets him do it, though, even after he finds her crying when one of his runs is on the news or when he ends up in the hospital or when they go to another funeral because they both know he could be next. Roy could be the flag-draped casket and she the weeping widow and theirs the glassy-eyes children watching their father buried in the earth. Sometimes it makes him cry, too, especially when it’s almost him. It doesn’t happen often.

But sometimes it does happen. Sometimes it is almost him. Death rears up and stares Roy right in the face sometimes and all he wants to do is go home and hug his children and hold his wife and remember that he’s not a ghost, wants to lose himself in every little sensation of his wife to remind them both he’s still alive, he’s still here, he’s not dead. He only wishes he could promise her he’ll come home when she tells him to do so.

Roy doesn’t want to be a ghost, not to his wife and not to his children. He doesn’t want to be a distant memory and a dusty photo in a frame for others to look on in wistful remembrance. Maybe it makes him just the same as everyone else, but he wants to live to a ripe old age, wants to see his children grow up, wants to meet his grandchildren, wants to see Joanne grow older and more beautiful every day.

Watching his own funeral happen is by far one of the worst things he’s ever experienced. He looks out over the grieving crowd, finding a sea of familiar faces. He wants to comfort Johnny and Chet, the young men trying not to openly cry and failing miserably. He wants to tell Cap and Mike he’s okay, to soothe their obvious yet quiet grief. He wants to hug his children, crying silently, confronted for the first time by the finality of death. More than anything, he wants to hold his wife, to tell her he loves her, to kiss her one last time. He can’t, though. He can’t because he is a ghost, a sad soul left behind that no one else can see or hear or touch.

Roy’s house is quiet and somber and brimming with grief. He can feel it in his soul, humming along his skin and under it. It gnaws at him like a bitter winter wind. He hates it. He hates to see his friends cry and his children cry and his wife cry when he can’t do anything to make it stop. Roy cannot soothe their tears and their grief. He cannot soothe his own. He cries out to them, to the people he loves so much, but they do not hear him. They can’t. Roy is a ghost, dead and buried for them to mourn.

He starts awake, looking around the room he’s in. He’s not at home. He’s not at the station. This is Rampart. Roy almost died earlier at a fire, came within in a hair’s breadth of suffocating when his air ran out. Poor Johnny had been in a panic, but it’s not Johnny at his side now. Cap has his hand on Roy’s arm and concern etched on his face. Cap had been the one on the radio, shouting Roy’s name as he started to black out. He asks if Roy’s alright, and Roy lies, tells him yes as he wipes at his face. Cap gives his arm a squeeze, the look on his face making it clear he knows Roy is lying but lets him. It was a close one today. Roy chokes down a sob when Cap ushers Joanne in. The sight of her is beautiful and perfect and wonderful and he reaches for her like he’s a drowning man. The feeling of holding her in his arms sets tears in his eyes again. He’s alive.


	5. Haunted

Hank has never lost a man, not as a lineman and not as an engineer, and he hasn’t as a captain, either. That is not to say he hasn’t seen death. He’s a fireman has been since he was eighteen. A man doesn’t go that long in the fire service without seeing some bodies, but he’s never had an immediate colleague die on his watch and he’d like to keep it that way. Everyone does, he supposes. Hank dreads the day he learns what it feels like because he knows he’s on borrowed time. Even lucky charms don’t work all the time. Luck always runs out eventually.

He doesn’t like to think about it, but sometimes the images of his men dying creep unbidden into his head. One minute it’s a normal day and the next he’s thinking of the myriad ways his men could die, always gruesome, always horrible. Sometimes he’ll replay a bad accident with different results. Sometimes it’ll be a new scene entirely, tormenting him with unspeakable horrors. Hank is a strong man, but he’s quite sure losing one of his men would break him. Hank is strong but not hard. He loves his men, loves them like his own family, his own flesh and blood, and having their blood on his hands would break him.

One of his men dying would mean he let them down and more than anything he does not want to let them down: not his men, not his family. It would feel too much like murder, he thinks, too much like blood on his hands. That’s always how it plays out in his macabre daydreams, anyway.  
Johnny gets blown out of a building by a gas explosion, and Hank and Marco run in to get him. The paramedic’s leg is literally snapped in two, a shard of bone protruding through the shin and the sight turns Hank’s stomach. Roy’s voice is tight as he treats his unconscious partner because Johnny hasn’t woken up yet. It’s not necessarily good but Hank’s almost grateful for Johnny’s unconsciousness. It means he’s not feeling the pain. If he were awake…

Johnny screams. It’s a wretched sound, pained and scared and gut-wrenching and heart-rending. Johnny’s screams ring in Hank’s ears, rocking him to his core. He can feel the screams vibrating in his very soul and it hurts. Hank has let Johnny down. He let him get hurt, let him get seriously injured, let him feel this terrible pain. Johnny’s features twist in a portrait of agony, teeth bared in the brief moments when he’s not screaming, his eyes wrenched shut. His men are all yelling for one or another to do something to help Johnny but Roy’s working as fast and best as he can. It’s no one’s fault but Hank’s and damn his men because not one is blaming him. Johnny holds his hand in a death grip, begging for morphine, begging for properidine, for death, for anything to bring him relief. It cuts Hank to the quick. He can’t bear to hear Johnny screaming like this.

Hank whispers to Johnny, trying to be heard over his screaming. He tells Johnny it will be okay, that he’ll be okay, that he must be calm and strong and please stop screaming. It’s the screaming that’s really getting to him, the screaming and sobbing. Roy is working as fast as he can but time drags on forever. Johnny’s been screaming and wailing for hours it seems. If only he would stop screaming…

Marco’s voice is in Hank’s ear and he looks down and Johnny is gone, his screams still echoing in Hank’s ears. He blinks and looks around, wiping at his face. Marco stands there in the office, his brows knit, chewing his lip, and a cold dread settles over Hank. Johnny is dead, and Marco has come to tell him so. Tears blur Hank’s vision. Marco steps forward, closer to Hank, and simply asks how he’s doing. No one ever asks the captain how he’s doing, like it’s an unspoken rule the cap’s always fine.

Hank remembers what day it is. Johnny was hurt nearly a week ago. He was unconscious the whole time. He never screamed. Hank wishes he knew how his brain could come up with screams like that because he’s sure he’s never heard something that awful in his whole life.  
Marco steps closer, asking again if Hank is alright. Hank is a strong man but not hard, and even a strong man must sometimes admit to weakness. So he tells him he’s not. He’s not alright. His heart hurts and his head hurts and his stomach hurts and the screams are still echoing in his ears. A strong hand grips Hank’s shoulder, a friendly hand. He draws in a shuddering breath. Marco’s presence is warm and comforting. Calmness rolls off him in waves, washes over Hank, soothing his overwrought mind and soul. He pulls in another shaking breath. Marco says nothing, but Hank is calmed all the same.


	6. Familia

Marco grew up in a big family. He’s the middle child of nine, bang in the middle as number five. He had four brothers and four sisters, all in alternating order. He’s never heard of that happening before. His family is still pretty big, though it’s lost a few in number. His father died of a stroke when he was twelve. His older brother was shot in front of him when he was sixteen; Miguel was nineteen. A year later, his baby sister Teresa died of measles complications at age nine. That left Marco Antonio the fourth of seven children, still bang in the middle.

At eighteen, Marco joined the fire department. He watched others in his small community succumb to gangs and violence, watched them go off to their jobs where they performed backbreaking and menial labor, watched them go to cook and clean and garden for much less pay than a white person would make. He didn’t want that to be him. As much as he respected his people, he didn’t want the kind of life where he was sneered at and spoken to like he was stupid and told to go back home, to go back where he came from even though he was born in LA. He knew people who put up with it every day, but they were much stronger than he. At a younger age, Marco was all piss and vinegar, ready to fight anyone who acted like that toward his family and friends, but no more.

Marco doesn’t fight the rude folks anymore. He knows he can’t fight them all, so he doesn’t try. Besides, he is a fireman, is brave and strong and since when can those rude folks do what he can do? That old grocer was never a fireman nor that rich white lady with all the Mexican gardeners who keep her yard so presentable. No, he doesn’t try to fight them because he does work now that makes his mama proud and his abuela and all his brothers and sisters. He doesn’t need anyone else’s approval anymore, no one’s but his family and men he works with. The men he works with are his family, and it’s his family he loves above all things.

The blood drains from his face when he hears the address over the loudspeaker for a structure fire. It’s his mama’s house, the one he grew up in, the one his mama still lives in, the one some of his siblings still live in. His heart is in his throat, mixing with bile and he wants to throw up but forces it down. He moves like he’s underwater but gets up on the engine just the same. No one speaks. They all know. Marco’s hands are gripping his knees so tight it hurts but it’s what he needs.

Chet reaches over and lays a rough hand on one of his. The feeling grounds him to reality. Reality is not where he wants to be right now. Reality is horrible and terrifying and awful. Reality is his childhood home burning to the ground. It’s as bad as he imagined, flames licking out of the windows, smoke billowing up toward the sky from everywhere. Other trucks are already crowded around, 51s being part of the second alarm, and Cap asks Marco if he wants to stay on the engine. He doesn’t know what he wants to do until he hears the incident commander call Johnny and Roy to go inside because people are trapped. Marco knows what he wants. He wants to go in; Cap won’t let him.

Cap calls for another engine to take over for 51s because there is no way Marco can work this run. Marco watches Chet run after Roy and Johnny and watches Cap explain the situation to the incident commander. Mike sits with him on the running board of the engine, an arm draped protectively around his shoulders, both for comfort and to keep him from doing something completely stupid. He’d tried to get Marco to sit on the other side, to not look at his childhood home burning down, but Marco refused. Smoke and tears burn his eyes, stick in his throat. He watches the flames eat up his history, every memory be it good or bad.

He watches his fellow firemen carry out limp bodies, one by one, some small and some full-sized, each belonging to a person he loves. Mike’s arm tightens around him. Maybe they’re still alive, just overcome by smoke. Chet and Johnny and Roy wear somber expressions when they come to him and all they can say is a choked apology. Marco isn’t sure why they’re apologizing. It’s not their fault. He sees his family, his mother and two of his sisters and a brother and six children all covered with blankets and no one tending them. His lip trembles. Dead. They’re all dead. A sob rips its way out of his throat before he can stop it. It feels like someone cut into his chest and is snapping his ribs one by one, sucking the air out of his lungs. He’d be ashamed of his grief if he could care but he can’t. They’re all dead and nothing matters anymore.

Mike’s voice is quiet in his ear. He can’t discern words, just feels the low rumble in his ear and against his side. His whole body shakes and jumps and heaves with sobs. Mike holds him close, whispering in his ear, asking him to wake up, to please wake up, which is strange because Marco is not asleep. He wishes he were. He wishes he were dead along with them.

The world changes around him, fading from smoke and flame to a dark apartment, Mike’s apartment. He’s staying here because they’re going fishing in the morning. There was no fire. Marco’s family is alive and whole and hale. Mike’s blue eyes are wide and a little afraid and his palms are rough on Marco’s bare shoulders. He feels the sweat cooling on his skin and it makes him shiver even more. The hands on his shoulders are rough and warm and calming and so is Mike’s voice telling him it was only a dream, it wasn’t real, everyone’s safe, it’s okay. Marco shakes his head because it’s not okay, it couldn’t have just been a dream.

Mike’s apartment is hot and sticky but Marco still shakes like it’s January in the mountains rather than July in the city with Mike’s broken air conditioner sitting uselessly on the floor. Marco can’t breathe right, tears still rolling down his face. Mike, though he’s sweating and probably boiling from the heat, holds Marco against his own bare chest, trying to soothe his shivering and his tears. Marco clings to him, not caring about the heat or the smell of sweat or the fact that both men are half-naked. He simply cries, the images of his dead family imprinted in his mind’s eye.

“It’ll be okay, Marco,” Mike whispers softly, soothingly, rubbing gentle circles over Marco’s back with rough hands, “You’re okay. It was a nightmare. Only a nightmare. You’re okay.”

But that isn’t true. Marco’s not okay. Certainly it was a nightmare, but that does not mean Marco is okay.


End file.
